Summary Justice
The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-1090, in the name of Cathy Jamieson, on reforming the role of non-jury courts, and one amendment to that motion.
I am pleased to open the debate on protecting communities and reforming the role of non-jury courts. As members are aware, last week I launched a four-month open consultation on the report of the review of summary justice. As a vital part of the consultation, the Parliament has the opportunity to debate the important issues and challenges that are raised in that report.
I am grateful to Sheriff Principal John McInnes and his committee for a report that sends a clear message, to both the professionals and the politicians, that justice in our range of non-jury courts is not working effectively or efficiently. I am taking great care to listen to that message, because when our courts are not working properly, the effects are felt in our homes, in our streets and in our workplaces. That is why the motion today is about protecting communities.
The review emphasises that the criminal justice system should be run for the benefit of users. That means all those who have to engage with the system, including the victims and the witnesses. It also means the communities that the system serves. I strongly agree with that. The consultation is about how we deliver a public justice service that protects communities and punishes criminals, but gives a second chance to those who would benefit from it. The service must be designed around the needs of the law-abiding majority of ordinary, hard-working people who care about the communities that they live in and not organised for the convenience of the law-breaking few who could not care less about their community.
I was interested in the minister's assessment that the system is not working well. I was intrigued by the public opinion research that was procured by Sheriff Principal McInnes, because it showed that, on the whole, there was a favourable response to the administration of summary justice. What is the basis of the minister's assessment?
I will develop the matter in more detail, but, as an initial response to that point, I would say that, although people feel that they have had a reasonably good deal from the system overall, it seems from the detail of some of the problems that people raise that, because of delays, justice is hardly summary in many instances. I am glad to see that Bill Aitken agrees with me—even if it is the only time that he agrees with me in the debate. Let us move on.
I want to kick-start the debate by asking a couple of key questions, and I would like us all to do so for the duration of the consultation exercise. First, how can we best deal with less serious, yet often persistent, offenders in a way that addresses their deeds and needs fairly? Secondly, how can we do that in a way that convinces the community from which the offender comes that justice is being done and is being seen to be done?
Part of the answer lies in a part of the report to which Annabel Goldie referred, on speedier justice. In relation to less serious offences, we need to move towards a system that delivers the shortest possible gap between offence and penalty. That is better for the community against which the offender has caused damage. Local people can see the link between an offence and the effective action that is taken by the authorities to deal with it. It is also better for the offender, because it makes a clear and direct link between the offence and the penalty, and it should make the offender less likely to reoffend. Speed is one way in which the courts can help to stop a life of crime in its tracks.
Effort is wasted in a slow and inefficient system, so change will benefit those who work within it. Front-line professionals, particularly the police, need to be freed up from unnecessary bureaucracy to use their skills to protect communities.
The minister is aware that there is a lack of transcripts in the summary justice system. I fully support the minister's intention to speed up the system. Given that information technology might be getting introduced into the system, will the minister consider the possibility of introducing a system of transcribed summary justice trials in the future?
The member and I have had some correspondence on that matter, and she is aware that I remain to be convinced that that would enable the process to be speedier, which is what we want. Rhona Brankin has raised particular issues with me, and I will happily speak to her about them separately from the debate.
Although we can learn lessons from achievements in other systems in relation to speedy disposals, we must accept responsibility for designing and delivering a system that is tailored to the Scottish context and which meets distinctively Scottish needs. That might sometimes involve tough and controversial decisions. The McInnes report has not shirked from highlighting the important issues, and neither will the Executive.
There are too many detailed recommendations in the report for me to cover in the short time that is available to me, but I want members to reflect on a number of key recommendations and issues. I will touch on five main themes.
First, I want to consider early and effective intervention. The report recommends a wider range of police or fiscal penalties, which can be offered as an alternative to prosecution. It considers that enforcement of those penalties should be greatly strengthened. There would be a greater emphasis on direct compensation to victims through a new fiscal compensation order. First offenders could be headed off with police or fiscal penalties before they got a criminal record, while the courts could focus on dealing swiftly with more serious and persistent offenders.
Let me be clear that those measures are not about soft options or hard options. I see that Bill Aitken is sitting back in his chair, with a sigh—he knows what I am going to say. Rather, they are about smart options. The emphasis must be placed on effective action. Our approach to those proposals, as it is to all the proposals in the report, is that we need to be clear what will work. That does not just mean what works for the system, but, above all, what will offer the best protection for our communities—and that is about protection from crime. Particularly here in Scotland, that means protection from crime that is caused by persistent reoffenders.
The second main theme is reducing reoffending. As members know, I launched a national debate and consultation on how we can work more effectively across the area of criminal justice to reduce reoffending and protect our communities. I am clear about the fact that the work on reoffending and the consultation on summary justice are fundamentally linked. The great majority of sentences of six months or less—those that give little time for rehabilitation—are, of course, passed by the summary courts. That is why we will look at the results of both consultations together to develop an integrated strategy to deal with less serious offenders.
The third theme is about improving the court service for victims and witnesses. Sheriff Principal McInnes stressed the importance of
"simple but effective processes which … take proper account of the needs of victims and witnesses."
I very much endorse that approach. Indeed, we have already placed victims and witnesses at the heart of our programme of justice reforms.
The same commitment underpins the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Bill. As we all know, that bill means that our courts will become fairer for victims and fairer for witnesses. At the same time, the bill will uphold the right to a fair trial for the accused.
The report that we are considering offers us a chance to make things better still for all victims and witnesses. Speed is at the heart of the change required, but we also need to make the processes more certain, in order to remove as much of the stress from victims and witnesses as possible.
The fourth theme is how our courts relate to the communities that they serve. The report recommends a wholly professional judiciary in the summary courts, on the ground that that would better fit with the rest of the committee's recommendations. People will be aware that two members of the committee dissented and argued for the retention of lay justice.
I will not announce here today the Executive's intentions in relation to lay justice—I am confident that Annabel Goldie, perhaps uncharacteristically, will support me on that. We need to consider very carefully the results of consultation before finalising the way ahead. To Mr Matheson and others who are prone to putting out a press release or two, I say that waiting for the results of consultation is not about hiding from a decision. On the contrary, it is about facing up to the real and difficult challenges that lie ahead, for politicians as well as for the professionals who run the system.
At present, the justice service can appear remote and its workings can appear unclear. We need to engage ordinary people in our communities in the delivery of local justice. The Executive has put the empowerment of communities at the heart of its programme. Antisocial behaviour legislation comes from detailed consultation with communities around Scotland on the changes that they want to see.
I welcome the report that was published earlier this week by HM inspectorate of constabulary for Scotland, which proposed a more active role for the public in shaping local police services and priorities. However, the McInnes report signals the need for a single, accountable criminal justice system—not just a collection of partners with their own agendas and targets. Such a system is sometimes confusing to deal with. The report proposes a system with agreed aims, shared between the partners and, very importantly, shared with the public—a system that will take responsibility for the delivery of swifter and fairer justice, but which will also be clear where each agency's contribution fits in.
The report recommends structural change within the system, which the committee considers will make for a simpler and more accountable system. It recommends, for example, that the administration of the summary courts should be unified within the Scottish Court Service. That recommendation would mean that, on this scenario, local authorities would no longer run the district courts.
We will listen carefully to the views that we receive on that recommendation and, indeed, on all the others. However, commitment to more effective joint working does not need to await structural change. It is already happening at both national and local level. Nationally, partner agencies are beginning to agree protocols for joint working. Sometimes that joint working is on unglamorous, but nonetheless important, work such as witness citation and police reporting. Locally, initiatives are beginning to unblock some of the logjams in the system. There is increased commitment to simplification and quality improvement where it counts, at local level. I recognise those efforts and I applaud them, but I want to see still more.
The fifth and final theme that I want to leave with members is effective operation of the summary courts. The McInnes report argues for a much more rigorous approach to fines enforcement, with escalating sanctions administered by a single, specialist delivery organisation. Imprisonment for fine default would be abolished, although it might remain the ultimate sanction if a supervised attendance order, for example, was breached.
We need to have a smarter approach to the enforcement of financial penalties for those who can afford to pay. In itself, the abolition of prison for fine default has gained significant support from parties around the chamber. We need to think more flexibly about being able to put a fine on an offender's time. If we consider some of those issues, we can achieve a more visible benefit to a community that has suffered from offending. The result will be a win-win situation: effective enforcement and visible justice.
Much of the report deals with technical recommendations on court procedure, which are designed to ensure that cases are better prepared earlier and reach court more quickly. Some of those recommendations are controversial, which is why it is important that we have a consultation process. There are important issues that demand serious consideration.
I want to achieve a public justice service that is seen by ordinary, hard-working people to be on their side. I want a system in which lay people feel that their voice is heard. The Parliament stands at the centre of the most radical reform of our criminal justice system in a generation. There will be change, not just in one part of the system but in every part of the system. Reform and improvement of non-jury courts represents an important part of that. Today's debate is an important part of the process, and I am confident that we will use this opportunity to help to shape summary justice for the future.
I move,
That the Parliament considers the continuing modernisation of the criminal justice system to be an important priority; notes the progress made to date to improve the delivery of a fair, efficient and accessible service for victims, witnesses and the accused; welcomes the recent report by Sheriff Principal McInnes into the operation of summary justice, and encourages everyone who wishes to do so to participate in the consultation on its recommendations.
Reform of our summary justice system is essential to ensure that we have a system that is fair to the victims and the accused; effective in deterring, punishing and helping to rehabilitate; and efficient in its use of time and resources. The report makes a significant contribution to ensuring that we have such a system.
On behalf of the Scottish National Party, I express my thanks to Sheriff Principal McInnes and those who served on his committee for a wide-ranging and thorough report. There are many detailed proposals in the report, many of which I am sure will be debated during the consultation exercise and any legislation that flows from that, but I want to pick up on two of the major and controversial recommendations in the report. I will focus on the proposal to remove district courts from the control of local authorities and the proposal to move to an entirely professional judiciary.
The report illustrates the varying standards between different local authority areas on the level of support that they give to their district courts, from the level of management and support to the very fabric of the building in which the district court sits. I recognise the concerns that have been expressed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which are contained in the report, that removing district courts from local authority control will result in loss of local control over the process. However, local authority administration of courts is an unnecessary distraction for local authorities, which they could do without. The unification of the summary criminal court system, administered by the Scottish Court Service, will take the courts out of the local authority budget and provide clearer lines of accountability. I therefore welcome the report's proposal in that regard.
However, I have serious reservations about the proposal for the introduction of summary sheriffs to replace lay justices. In principle, I believe that lay justices continue to have a role to play in our summary criminal justice system. Lay justices play an important role. Lay justice is a powerful expression of community involvement in our justice system. Several key arguments in favour of retaining the role of lay justices were submitted to the committee in its consideration of that matter. Those arguments were: the importance of the community link and the community awareness that justices of the peace bring to the process; the fact that lay members of the bench provide a worthwhile role in the community that they serve; the capacity of non-professionals to reach a balanced judgment on their peers; and the fact that lay justices are volunteers, who are less vulnerable to becoming case-hardened. All those arguments are valid, but if we are to retain lay justices in the present system, changes will have to be made. I will return to that point later.
Given the severity of the problems that have been identified in our summary justice system, it is questionable whether abolishing the role of lay justices would address those problems effectively. Sheriff Principal McInnes's committee gathered evidence on 13 major problems in the system, ranging from the time that is taken for the police to report cases to the procurator fiscal to the time that is taken for cases to be started in court to the time that is taken for cases to reach a conclusion in court. The evidence demonstrates clearly that the system is struggling to cope with the demands that are placed upon it.
The information in the report and the evidence that the committee gathered do not suggest that there is a groundswell of public opinion in favour of getting rid of lay justices. On the contrary, the committee's evidence demonstrates that people are not dissatisfied with the current role of judges in the summary process. The committee's survey of public opinion, to which Annabel Goldie referred, found that some 60 per cent of respondents believed that lay justices should continue to have a role; only 26 per cent of respondents preferred a wholly professional system.
If lay justices are to continue to play their role in the justice system, there is a clear need to change the present way in which the system operates. As the report highlighted, we must provide greater consistency of support and management to justices in performing their role; ensure that the recruitment process is more inclusive, so that it more accurately reflects the make-up of modern society; and provide more detailed training and support to justices of the peace. At the same time, we need to examine the fabric of the estate within which the system operates. If those issues were addressed adequately, I believe that lay involvement in our justice system could continue.
In considering the report, members should keep in mind the changes that will take place in our High Court system as a result of the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, which will result in some 20 per cent of High Court cases being pushed down into the sheriff courts. When that change is combined with the introduction of the work that will come up from the district courts, there is a danger that excessive pressures will be placed on our sheriff courts and that they will not be able to cope with the demands.
Fine enforcement and collection are highlighted in the report. I welcome the recommendation that a single organisation, rather than individual courts, should be responsible for the collection of fines. In particular, I welcome the recommendation that greater consideration must be given to the possibility of introducing a unit fine system. I have suggested several times in the chamber that such a system would operate more fairly and more equitably. Given that the recommendation has now come from an independent committee rather than just from me, I suggest that a unit fine system would be a smart approach to tackling the present system's problems.
Although the report that the Scottish Executive commissioned has been some two years in the making, we are still none the wiser about what the Executive's views are or what changes it would like to see. We need reports that detail the problems and provide us with possible solutions, but we also need leadership in driving forward reforms. Such leadership has been lacking from the Executive. Whatever the Executive eventually gets round to doing to address the problems, its reforms must impart confidence to everyone: victims, witnesses, accused persons, court users and, above all, the communities that the system serves.
I move amendment S2M-1090.1, to leave out from "considers" to end and insert:
"supports the need to have a fair, effective and efficient summary criminal justice system; welcomes the recent report by Sheriff Principal McInnes; acknowledges the note of dissent within the report, and believes that future changes to the summary justice system must impart confidence to everyone: victims, witnesses, accused persons, court users and, above all, the communities they serve."
I declare an interest as an enrolled solicitor in Scotland.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. At the outset, let me say that I am not inimical to Sheriff Principal McInnes's report, which is a helpful contribution to the continuing debate on our criminal justice system.
On the substantive content of the report, however, I feel rather as I used to feel about school dinners—I liked the mince and gravy, but was less certain about the cabbage, and I was very keen on the jelly but remained to be convinced about the tapioca. That demonstrates my ambivalence towards the report, because, for example, it is Conservative party policy to deal with fine defaulting by more efficient collection of outstanding fines rather than by resorting to custodial sanction; I have spoken about that in the chamber. Equally, it is our policy to modernise our courts to meet the needs of society as it is structured today and to introduce weekend and evening sittings to reduce the current backlog; my colleague Bill Aitken has spoken about that. I am delighted that the McInnes report endorses our thoughts on those issues.
There is compelling common sense about a mandatory discount in sentence following an early guilty plea; about relaxing rules of evidence when introducing closed circuit television or other recorded evidence; and about taking a much more pragmatic approach to social inquiry reports. Those are all positive suggestions and, on their own, they would facilitate the improvement of summary criminal justice.
The minister alluded to what we mean by summary criminal justice, and I think that that is an important point for us all to bear in mind. Summary justice is meant to deliver swift and local justice within a procedural framework that is simpler than that attaching to more complex and serious criminal cases. That is why I would be strongly influenced by public opinion on its delivery; we have already referred to that in this debate. Public perception is important and perhaps it should be instructive, because what it may suggest is that there is nothing wrong with the role of the summary courts, but that we ought perhaps to reform the function and administrative operation of those courts.
I say that for two reasons. First, there may well be merit in reviewing how district courts operate. Perhaps there is a need to examine consistency of sentencing, and that is brought out in the McInnes report. Perhaps it would be desirable to bring those courts under the Scottish Courts Administration; I can see attraction in that. Perhaps there is an overdue need to allow district courts to impose drug treatment and testing orders. Most drug-dependent offenders appear before the district courts, not the sheriff courts. At the moment, only when an individual graduates to the sheriff court after committing more serious offences is their drug problem assessed under the criminal justice system. There are certainly innovations, changes and improvements that can now be brought to the operation of the district courts.
My second reason for thinking that we need to look at function and administrative operation rather than at role is the reason that Michael Matheson referred to by asking about the practical effect of merging the district court case load into the sheriff court. We know that the consequences of the Bonomy review, which will be implemented under the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, will increase that case load. Estimates vary, but there is no doubt that there will be a significant increase to sheriff-and-jury work.
If we look at that increase against a current sheriff summary case load that has shown a pattern of increase over 2000, 2001 and 2002, and if we also study the similar pattern of increase for the stipendiary magistrate courts, we see that there is a pressure point. That pressure point will certainly be brought to bear in the sheriff court system if there is amalgamation.
Does Annabel Goldie accept that the point that is made in Sheriff Principal McInnes's report is that part of the process is about taking out of the court system some of the cases that could be dealt with effectively by other means? Does she therefore support the introduction of a greater use of fiscal fines, for example?
There is attraction in that proposal. Indeed, to be fair to the Executive, the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill incorporates some of those measures. I would be much more minded to see how the measures work in practice to quantify whether there is a reduction in the burden of casework going to our criminal courts; I certainly would not want to judge that in advance.
If we take the increasing pattern to which I referred, and add to that the district court work load throughout the rest of Scotland, it is quite clear that there will be pressure on sheriff court infrastructure, buildings and personnel. It seems to me that, before any change to the structure and role of non-jury courts is contemplated, some searching questions must be asked and the answers must be procured.
Unlike their counterparts down south, members of the Scottish Executive should not be caught up in a storm of change propelled only by the gale- force influence of reforming zeal. To be fair, I do not think that they want to be. If deficiencies exist in the current system, they should be identified and answers should be found.
What are the deficiencies? Can they be addressed under the existing structure? Is dispensing summary justice with more than 700 full lay justices a more cost-effective provision of justice than incorporating the system into the sheriff court? Does anyone know what it currently costs to administer lay justice throughout Scotland? Is it intended that the district courts would be shut? Would the public have to attend sheriff courts? Is that level of local justice acceptable to the public? Can our sheriff court infrastructure cope? When one of the most important groups in our society, young people, is dealt with by what is, in essence, a lay system, why is such a system inappropriate for minor summary crime? Does there exist, or is it proposed to procure, a property survey of sheriff and district court buildings to ascertain their condition and quantify current or latent repair obligations?
I do not know the answers to those questions, but I know that no structural change in the role of our summary courts should proceed without first the answers being obtained.
Although I welcome many aspects of the report and I urge that the positive aspects be implemented, I also urge the greatest caution before we storm ahead with wholesale change without compelling evidence that the change is justified.
On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I thank Sheriff Principal McInnes and his committee for their very thorough report. However, as the report runs to almost 300 pages, we can only skim over the surface of much of it today.
To some extent, I have a feeling of déjà vu, because the Justice 1 Committee has spent considerable time—perhaps I have spent less time than others, as I have had a few weeks off—considering the consequences of the Bonomy report. Many of the key issues that both reports addressed are common to the solemn and summary justice systems and include the need for cases to reach court more quickly; the need for cases to be prepared earlier; the need for better communication between defence and prosecution; the need for earlier pleas; and the need to make trials more efficient, particularly for witnesses and victims. We all agree that those are aims that we want to achieve.
As Michael Matheson said, the current system is patchy across the country. Public confidence in it is also patchy. The McInnes report reminds us that 72 per cent of people who were surveyed stated that they were not at all confident that the current system deters reoffending. Obviously, that is a crucial issue for the Executive.
Changes need to be implemented to make the current system better, but the big question is whether we can address the problems within the existing system or whether we need the full-scale reform that McInnes proposes. We all agree that we need a system that delivers the shortest possible gap between the offence and the outcome of a trial or other decision. People want effective and quick justice and they want to see in their own communities what that means in practice—I welcome the comments that the minister made following her recent visit to New York.
People also want consistent justice. We know, anecdotally, that there is a lack of confidence in justices of the peace on that issue, which, if we retain the current system, we need to address through training and recruitment. People want a reduction in reoffending.
As I said, the question is whether all the issues can be dealt with in the existing system or whether we need to abolish district courts and do some of the other controversial things that McInnes has suggested. Some of the report's recommendations are controversial, as is reflected in the fact that the report is a majority committee report. For that reason, if for no other, I welcome the Scottish Executive's consultation. We must listen carefully to the views that we receive.
There will be a period of change and flux in any event. As colleagues have said, 20 per cent of High Court business will be shifted into sheriff courts in the coming few years. Is it sensible to get rid of district courts at the same time? The jury is out on a number of those issues. However, we acknowledge that moving to a unified system has its attractions, certainly in terms of potential efficiency and greater accountability.
A number of us have concerns about abolishing lay justices. One of the problems lies in losing the expertise of hundreds of people who have voluntarily given of their time and who have, over the years, built up experience. We should not just say, "Professionals good, lay people bad." I do not have to stand up and declare an interest as a lawyer to speak in this debate. I am a lay member of the Justice 1 Committee, in exactly the same way as I was a lay member of the Health and Community Care Committee, which I convened for four years—I was not a doctor, a nurse or a therapist. Most of us bring our expertise to the subject matters before us without having had any professional involvement in them before we came to the Parliament, so we should not discount the involvement of lay members.
At a time when the sheriff court system is about to undergo a great deal of change and face an increased work load, I take on board the comments of the minister and Sheriff McInnes that we can do a lot to reduce the work load resulting from minor offences. However, we should wait to see whether those measures work before we make further changes to the system. It might be worth considering whether the changes should be phased in. How will we physically replace 700 lay JPs? How will we train and recruit summary sheriffs? There will be a certain amount of upheaval.
At a time when, as the minister said, we are trying to connect the justice system even more to the public, should we be taking the lay justice element out by abolishing district courts? I appreciate that there are more questions than answers, but in relation to community participation and knowledge, the response from the public in the McInnes report shows that people have faith in JPs. A lot of work can be done on the composition of the bench, to which the report also alludes.
We welcome many of the recommendations, such as the increased use of alternatives to prosecution. The recommendations on fines will be universally welcomed, because currently thousands of people are in prison who should not be there. We await the responses to the consultation with great interest. I thank Sheriff Principal McInnes for a considerable piece of work.
The long-awaited report by Sheriff Principal McInnes is a weighty document, but it is a brilliant piece of work. It is hard to keep up with all the recommendations. I admit that I did not get to the end of the report, but I can see clearly that there is an awful lot for debate. I believe that our summary justice system needs to be modernised, as 96 per cent of our criminal court business takes place in the district and sheriff courts. There is a lot to consider, but I urge the Executive not to introduce all the changes in one go, if it decides to proceed with them. Let us have time to think about some of the changes.
As Annabel Goldie highlighted, summary justice has been hampered by the lack of sentencing options in the district court. I recently wrote to the minister on a problem in which I am interested—women offenders who are charged with prostitution and who come before the district court. The lack of available options has meant that those women have ended up in a cycle of offending from which they could have escaped if they had gone to the sheriff court, which has a bigger range of available sentences, including drug treatment and testing orders.
Not that long ago, the District Courts Association told the justice committees that there are so many time bars in relation to speeding offences that one's friends might as well be advised not to bother responding to a fixed-penalty notice. Yes, we breathed in when we heard that, but it is on the record. It is clear that there is a lot to fix. I do not doubt that we should use this opportunity to reform summary justice in the district courts in particular.
I support the proposal for a unified summary court system under the Scottish Court Service, which has expertise in running the higher courts. I can see only benefits in unifying the system. I also support the recommendations on improving sentencing options and alternatives in the criminal justice system, which is one of the report's most comprehensive contributions to the debate. I agree that speed should take priority over other factors, including the establishment of specialist courts. The public rightfully demand that measure. The non-reporting options and the potential introduction of police warnings, fixed-penalty notices and fiscal fines are worthy suggestions, which we should take time to consider.
The Parliament must consider legislating to improve public confidence in the appropriateness of sentences. The report states:
"Persistent offenders, many of them under 21, may have multiple summary prosecutions outstanding at any one time. It is not uncommon for there to be 10 or more current cases involving the same person."
If there are outstanding cases in other courts, cases are often adjourned to await the outcome of at least one of those cases. Continual adjournment has undesirable consequences, which are exacerbated in such circumstances. We should change the law to ensure that procurators fiscal can bring cases together and ensure that the sentencing on conviction reflects the number of offences.
The report contains many other opportunities for the Parliament to legislate, but it also has its controversial aspects. Undoubtedly, the most controversial issue is the proposed removal of lay justices and the introduction of summary sheriffs. The minister was right to be cautious about that. We should allow the consultation in the coming four months to give us an idea of what others think about the suggestion. There is no guarantee that consistency will prevail if we abolish lay justices, given that inconsistencies already exist in other aspects of the court system.
We need a speedier and more efficient system with more sophisticated procedures and a wider range of options. The guiding principle in considering the way forward should be to find the best way of achieving better-quality justice. I agree that early pleas should result in sentence discounting, but only at the earliest stage. We must be careful about discounting short sentences. I agree that we should remove the incentives in the system to plead not guilty, which are a consequence of the legal aid system. I also agree about the need to disclose previous convictions in certain instances. However, I do not agree that we should try a person in their absence. The Parliament has made its view clear on that matter. The problems with trying a person in their absence have been pointed out.
We should have a careful revision of the report, which is an excellent and complex piece of work that gives us a lot to work with in modernising the system. I genuinely believe that, if we get the system right, the public will have much greater confidence in summary justice. I look forward to the debate that is ahead.
Like Annabel Goldie, I declare that I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland, albeit a non-practising one.
I, too, welcome the report from Sheriff Principal McInnes and his committee. We need to recognise that we are in the 21st century by making changes and moving forward. We must consider the difference between perception and reality. Perception is often as important as reality—there is a perception about aloofness which, in many instances, is borne out by the facts and a perception that the guilty go free—but the reality in many instances is that our system works well, although it needs to be amended, improved and built on. That, rather than knocking down and reconstructing the system, is what Sheriff Principal McInnes seeks to do
Although we are dealing with summary justice and not solemn matters, that does not mean that we are not talking about serious offences. Even low-level crime that is committed over a period of time can have serious effects on individuals and communities. Given that we are dealing with summary justice, we must strike the right balance between individual rights and state responsibilities, between access to justice and affordable justice and between local input and national criteria and standards. To be fair, I should add that Sheriff Principal McInnes has tried to do that.
Obviously, the major point of discussion has been the question of lay justices and summary sheriffs. To some extent, I am agnostic on the matter. The issue has to be discussed and debated, as is evident by the fact that a minority report was published expressing a different opinion. There are views each way and I can see advantages and disadvantages.
I do not know why we should necessarily take a one-size-fits-all approach. There must be a possibility of leaving systems open and flexible. After all, we still have stipendiary magistrates in Glasgow—if they ever existed anywhere else, they performed only a minor role. One approach could be taken in rural areas and another could be taken in urban areas, for example. Urban areas have access to the qualified pool of summary sheriffs, as they have been described, but that is not the case in rural areas such as Dornoch, where summary sheriffs would not be easily obtainable.
Balancing that is the fact that, in many urban areas, people have less desire to make an input because of the size of the community, whereas, in a rural area, there is a desire to get involved, because cases take on greater significance. Therefore, my only plea is that we should not take a one-size-fits-all approach and that we should leave open the possibility for areas to take different routes if they express a desire to do so. I believe that, if that happened, there would likely be a difference between urban and rural areas because of the availability of local sheriffs in urban areas and because of the desire for local input in rural areas. We should accept that.
Many of the recommendations in the report do not require consolidated legislation or new legislation. They are—to avoid legalese—no-brainers. We do not have to go back to the beginning, because the changes that the report recommends are ones that the public and the professions have been calling for.
There should be movement on fixed-penalty notices. Although we need to penalise people, we do not necessarily have to do so in the same way as we have been doing. We can decriminalise some things and still have the same effect. Let us press on with that. I doubt whether police officers need to continue submitting standardised reports to the procurator fiscal, given that we are in the 21st century and have access to modern technology such as mobile phones. Such changes do not require the same legislative process as more complex changes. The consensus that I believe exists in the Parliament would enable the Executive to drive on and make the necessary changes in order to deal with the more substantive matters in other ways.
Those other matters will require discussion. Presumably, legislation will be required to deal with the new appeals procedure, but that, too, seems to be a no-brainer to some extent. We recognise that we have to maximise the usefulness of our highly paid and qualified judges and allow certain matters to be dealt with in different ways. The only point that I will make in that regard is that, if we ask a silly question, we get a silly answer; therefore, if we ask for a social inquiry report in a murder case, we should not be surprised if we get a silly response. For goodness' sake, in such instances, we should lighten up and recognise that, if a social inquiry report that we have asked for clearly cannot be implemented, we should not blame the social worker but change the system. I believe that we should agree to park the matters that we can all agree on and debate the other issues in greater detail.
Sheriff Principal McInnes's report on the provision of summary justice in Scotland's sheriff and district courts includes a review of the structures and procedures in the courts. The report outlines a set of guiding principles, against which the committee proposals were tested—fairness to victims, witnesses and the accused; effectiveness in terms of deterrence and the provision of a system that is simple and consistent; and efficiency in the use of time and resources. Moreover, the committee recognised the need for quick delivery in the justice system. Crucially, its clear view was that the summary justice system of the future should be user centred rather than service driven.
The committee tackled the structure first, with the recommendation to unify the summary court system under the central administration of the Scottish Court Service, funded by the Scottish Executive. That creates the opportunity to plan for and invest in infrastructure, information technology and training on a consistent basis throughout Scotland. That is sensible in terms of providing a quality service to court users that is simple and effective, with sufficient flexibility to permit responsiveness to change when required.
The proposal for the creation of coterminous boundaries is equally sensible. At present, Scotland's commission areas—the local authority areas in which district courts are run and managed—differ markedly because of the local authorities' different interpretations of their statutory duty to provide sensible and sufficient premises and facilities for the district court. The alignment of boundaries should ensure that existing sheriffdoms and commission areas will be coterminous with police and procurator fiscal operating areas and with local authority boundaries. That is to be welcomed.
The benefits of the proposals on judges in summary courts are less obvious. I preface my comments with a declaration of interests, as I am a justice of the peace in the south Lanarkshire commission area. The report recommends a move to a system that employs only professional, qualified judges, to be known as summary sheriffs. There is a distinct absence of concrete evidence to substantiate the assumption that replacing lay justices with a professional judiciary will improve the delivery of justice. However, other proposals that relate to procedures involving the courts, police and prosecution will go a considerable way towards achieving that aim.
The recommendation to appoint a single agency to collect court fines will save court time, as will the recommendation to vary court hours to allow courts to sit in the evenings and at weekends. Both that and the recommendation that fine defaulters should have their fines deducted from benefits or have their wages arrested are measures that the Conservatives have consistently advocated to ensure that justice is delivered more speedily and to prevent delays.
The creation of a single agency for fine collection will save police time, as will the recommendations for the greater use of non-reporting options and fixed-penalty notices for non-traffic offences. Those proposals, together with the recommendation that the police have the option to submit abbreviated court reports where that is appropriate, are important and will undoubtedly reduce the amount of time that the police spend on administrative duties. The proposals will free up resources for on-the-beat policing.
The recommendation that
"alternatives to prosecution should be made more widely available … to enable the courts to focus on"
speeding up the
"handling of serious crimes … while giving police and procurators fiscal … powers … to respond quickly and appropriately to minor offences"
is generally welcomed. The proposal to lead CCTV evidence or other recorded evidence without the requirement for a witness to speak to it is sensible, as is the recommendation to pilot the co-location of police officers in Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service offices.
Particularly welcome is the recommendation to remove the mandatory requirement to obtain a new social inquiry report prior to sentence if the report has been produced in the past three months or if the court is satisfied, having regard to the sentence that is likely to be imposed, that a new report would serve no useful purpose. Social inquiry reports are expensive and time consuming to compile and as a result they delay justice unnecessarily.
In conclusion, the report is very much to be welcomed, although there are three areas that require further scrutiny: the proposal to abolish lay justices, the recommendation of trial in absence and the crucial requirement for discussion between the prosecution and the defence at an early stage, together with early disclosure of the Crown's case to encourage the tender of a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity. The early-disclosure culture that is advocated in the reform of High Court proceedings must permeate through to summary justice—which accounts for 96 per cent of criminal cases that are prosecuted—if the objective to deliver a more efficient and effective summary justice system is to be realised.
Sheriff Principal McInnes must be congratulated on his long and detailed report into our summary justice system. Like Pauline McNeill, I am sorry that I did not get to the end of his report.
As has been said, 96 per cent of criminal court business relates to summary justice, so it is crucial that the system should work effectively. The delays in the system are well known, although they are not all due to the system. When he launched his report, Sheriff Principal McInnes said:
"The emphasis is on simple but effective processes which will retain and, I hope, enhance the confidence of the public and take proper account of the needs of victims and witnesses."
I will return to that quotation at the end of my speech.
The report recommends a considerable expansion of the use of alternatives to prosecution—for example, the introduction of recorded police warnings, greater use by the police of fixed-penalty notices and a wider range of fiscal fines. I am all in favour of any suggestion that keeps people out of prison, so I welcome the recommendation that we abolish the use of prison as a penalty for fine defaulters.
Other recommendations aim to provide for more efficient handling of cases that do not require prosecution. Perhaps the most beneficial result of that would be the saving of witness time. If trials were more efficient, only those witnesses whose evidence is in contention and therefore requires to be heard would need to attend.
I will spend most of the time that I have available on the role of the justice of the peace in the summary justice system. I should declare an interest, as I was a justice of the peace while I was a local councillor, which allows me to give an informed view of the subject. I accept that it is a good idea for the district courts system to come under the Justice Department—indeed, that was suggested in the Liberal Democrats' manifesto in 1999. However, it is interesting to note that the one recommendation that produced a dissenting voice was on the abolition of district courts, about which Sheriff Lockhart and Helen Murray JP said:
"we feel strongly that the decision on the future of lay justice should be made on the grounds of principle rather than of expediency, tidiness or personal preference."
They went on to say:
"The case for the abolition of lay justice is not rooted in research or objective analysis of the performance of Scottish district courts."
I want the summary justice system as a whole to work better for victims, witnesses and the accused. Locally recruited, properly trained justices can play a proper role in that. There is no reason why, with better training and confidence to challenge delays in the system, lay justices cannot help but improve our court system.
Lay justices, of which there are more than 700 in Scotland, carry on a long tradition of locally based voluntary service. The service that they provide is similar to that involving the people who sit on children's panels. However, we are not talking about getting rid of those people; in our justice reforms, we want only to improve and strengthen children's panels. I believe that the current summary justice system's shortcomings cannot be overcome by the abolition of justices in the district court. Many of the cases with which they deal are minor and I believe that it is not the best use of resources to have a fully trained sheriff sitting on minor traffic and other offences.
The retention of voluntary justices can save the criminal court system a significant amount of money, which could be better spent on restorative sentences that aim to keep minor offenders out of prison. That is crucial, as most people accept that short-term sentences are no good for anybody. There is an argument that the legal advisers to district courts add to the cost, even if the justices are not paid, but those advisers are clerks of the court and would still be there even if we had a full-time judiciary in the district courts.
Sheriff Lockhart and Helen Murray said:
"We see no reason why, with appropriate training, lay justices should not be pro-active and willing to challenge defence and prosecution delays."
I assure the Parliament that justices already challenge the defence and the prosecution, not only on delays, but on other matters. I often did so. There can always be improved training, while revision of the selection processes should allow justices to be even more representative of the communities that they serve.
The great strength of the district court system lies in the lay justices and their depth of knowledge of their communities. Lay justices continue the tradition of voluntary public service. I am entirely in agreement with Michael Matheson: I have no problem with taking the district courts away from the local authorities and administering them with the rest of the justice system. Earlier, I read this quotation from Sheriff McInnes:
"The emphasis is on simple but effective processes".
That is exactly the strength of district courts.
In the four-month consultation period, I hope that the Executive will reflect carefully on the views that I have no doubt will be expressed by many justices of the peace and others. I hope that those views will persuade the Executive that justices of the peace still have a fundamental role to play in the 21st century justice system that the McInnes report aims to produce.
Few would argue that the present functioning of non-jury courts is not in need of reform. The central reason behind establishing the summary justice review committee under Sheriff Principal McInnes in late 2001 was ministers' recognition of the widespread view that the court system had become slow and ineffective and needed radical refashioning.
I welcome much of the report and the minister's decision to launch a four-month consultation on its recommendations. It is fit and proper that the Scottish public should have the opportunity to contribute to the debate about the proposed reforms.
The minister has said that she wants
"to make the most of the opportunity created by this report to sharpen up the way our justice system handles the majority of offenders across Scotland"
and that
"we need to move towards a system that delivers the shortest possible gap between offence and penalty."
That approach is reasonable and correct.
As the Parliament attempts through the Justice 1 Committee's deliberations on the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill to tackle the culture of adjournment in High Court proceedings, we need to be mindful of the other end of our justice system. Summary justice is the lower end of the criminal justice system and accounts for 96 per cent of criminal court business. Summary courts deal with 130,000 cases a year. Summary justice is therefore a vital component in our justice system. Dealing with such cases as expeditiously and appropriately as possible is imperative.
Although many such cases are minor, they affect the quality of life of victims and of communities. Delay in dealing with such cases, as with more serious matters, can corrode the public's confidence in our justice system. If implemented, many of the radical proposals in the report will have a positive effect. For instance, the McInnes committee is not divided on the principle of having a unified summary criminal court system that is funded by the Scottish Executive and administered by the Scottish Court Service. As members have said, summary court management is split between local authorities and the Scottish Court Service. In today's circumstances, that does not make much practical sense. There is no division on that.
I am also pleased by the suggestions of improvements in collecting and enforcing fines. I am sure that most—if not all—members agree that having the police acting as debt collectors wastes resources hugely. The suggestion that a single public sector organisation should administer fines is welcome and should improve the collection and enforcement of fines.
Other proposals are worthy of support. It will be interesting to see what the Scottish public make of them in the consultation process that is under way. However, one central recommendation is controversial. It relates to the minister's fourth theme, which is on courts relating to communities in the delivery of local justice. I am concerned and have strong reservations about the report's proposal of a fully professional judiciary. The note of dissent that Sheriff Lockhart and Mrs Murray JP produced, which is attached as annex A to the report, raises several serious worries that I hope will give the ministerial team pause for thought.
When Sheriff Lockhart and Mrs Murray say that they see
"the inherent desirability of retaining … the lay justiciary in dealing with less serious crimes,"
I think that they have a point. When they say that there is an
"absence of concrete evidence that moving to an all professional judiciary will significantly improve the delivery of justice in such cases",
I tend to agree.
Sheriff Lockhart and Mrs Murray lay out their concerns at some length and in more detail in their note of dissent regarding the need for lay justice but, obviously, I do not have enough time to go into that matter today. However, I hope that ministers will reflect on the concerns that they outline before the ministerial team reaches a decision.
Sheriff Lockhart and Mrs Murray make a strong case when they say:
"Lay justice is a powerful expression of community participation in the regulation of society. It seems inconsistent to retain it in the most serious cases—in which completely untrained juries make key decisions on the evidence—but to remove it in the context of summary justice."
Notwithstanding that one major concern and a concern that my colleague Pauline McNeill raised about trial in absence, I am happy to support the motion, as it clearly expresses the need for the long-awaited modernisation of non-jury courts so that they can work more quickly and efficiently for the benefit of victims, witnesses and the people whom we all seek to represent in our communities. I commend the motion to members.
I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. Other members have given observations on the sheriff court. When I have attended sheriff courts over the years, my abiding observation has been that one social class, which is represented by the sheriffs and lawyers, will be at the front of the court, and another social class, which is represented by defendants, victims and those in the public gallery, will be at the back of the court. I notice that the McInnes report has very little to say about that.
I read the McInnes report with interest. At the time, I was also reading a book by Helena Kennedy that can only be described as an onslaught on new Labour's policy on the law. I recommend that book to the ministers. It is called "Just Law" and is a revelation, perhaps in the same way that "Das Kapital" was a revelation in its time, although it is too early to say. I am sorry that I had not read the book before we had the debate on the Bonomy review because Helena Kennedy dismisses new Labour's party line—which has again been emphasised today by the minister—of increasing the rights of victims and witnesses and giving a perfunctory nod in the direction of a fair trial.
In paragraphs 2.6 to 2.9 of the McInnes report, a theme is repeatedly established. McInnes says that he accepts that
"the offender remains innocent until proved guilty",
but thinks that the system
"has to be fair to victims and witnesses as well as to the accused."
Why is there always a "but" in such debates? I accept that, under the review, we are dealing with minor penalties, some of which will not create a criminal record. Nonetheless, that is also the Labour party's line in respect of Bonomy, antisocial behaviour and vulnerable witnesses. It is purist new Labour.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will let the minister in in just a second. I will quote what Helena Kennedy says about remarks such as those of the minister. On page 7 of the book—for people who want to get it—she says:
"rebalancing the system in favour of victims has all the hallmarks of the advertising agency".
She states:
"Maintaining that justice for victims can only be purchased at the expense of the accused is as dishonest as the claim that jurors are the source of miscarriages of justice."
She continues:
"Those who claim that we need a levelling of the playing field between victims and defendants are deluding the public about the role of the state. The state is the real beneficiary when power is shifted."
She also says:
"The criminal justice system is based on the fundamental principle that it is far worse to convict an innocent person than to let a guilty one walk free. It is that fundamental value which is now in jeopardy."
Those remarks are apposite in the week in which the nightmare of TC Campbell and Joe Steele finally ended, but it appears that such a key lesson is still to be learned by the Executive.
I wonder whether Colin Fox would read out some of those remarks to people in disadvantaged communities whose lives are blighted by crime. I invite him to reflect carefully on the issue of ensuring that there is justice for victims and witnesses and, indeed, on the right to a fair trial for the accused, which the Executive absolutely supports. Does he agree that many members of the public who have been victims think that the scales have tipped too far in favour of offenders rather than in favour of the law-abiding majority in our communities?
I respond to that by saying that the scales have tipped too far in the other direction in parliamentary debates. The right to a fair trial comes in for considered criticism time and again. The minister knows full well that this is not the first time that such remarks have been made in the chamber.
The McInnes review was ordered because we have a slow, congested system that suffers from prolonged delays and adjournments because of the volume of cases and the length of time taken to dispose of them. Of all the facts in the McInnes report, the one that stuck out the most was that the number of cases in court proceedings has fallen by 60,000 in 10 years, but it is now taking far longer to process them; 25 per cent of cases are still not disposed of after 50 weeks. I accept that there is a problem to be addressed.
Let me be clear. I welcome many of the McInnes report's practical solutions for unclogging the system. I welcome the fact that he is proposing to take tens of thousands of cases out of the criminal justice system altogether: for example, non-payment of road tax and non-possession of a television licence—and I hope that minor drug possession is also in there. There are far too many prosecutions for trivial matters.
I welcome alternatives to prosecution, compensation orders, abbreviated reports to the police, the front loading of defence fees, early summary statements, and consistency of sentencing. What I do not like in the McInnes report is the fact that modernising the system seems to involve abridging defendants' rights. In my opinion, paragraph 2.39 of the report endangers defendants' rights and compromises them by suggesting, "Just plead guilty and stop messing us around." Encouraging innocent people to plead guilty endangers them and it is not the right way forward for justice in this country.
I agree with some of the points that others have made about trials in the absence of the defendant, although I have no time to elaborate on that. That proposal worries me.
The minister has come here before and made us aware that considerable resources have gone into the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service but, as she knows, there is a great deal of concern that not enough of that has gone to the front-line troops and too much has gone to number crunchers and management gurus.
It is difficult to do justice to a 280-page report that contains 140 recommendations and a significant note of dissent. I am sure that some good will come from the four-month consultation, even if it is only a resolution of some of the conflict between that note of dissent and the substance of the report. Nonetheless, it is disappointing that the Executive has not felt able to "open the dirty raincoat" and let us see its preliminary thoughts on those parts of the report that it should find relatively easy to accept.
I turn to one or two points that touch on the note of dissent and the core report and ask how the committee could have been misled in certain respects by some of the evidence that it appears to have used. I refer particularly to the English report to Lord Irvine's office "The judiciary in the magistrates' courts", which was published in 2000. Pages 75 and 76 of the McInnes report refer to that report, which came up with several financial suggestions that are, upon examination, incredible. It suggests:
"A lay magistrate costs on average £495 per annum compared to the £90,000 per annum total employment costs of a stipendiary."
I do not find that to be particularly astonishing. Those figures translate into £3.59 per appearance before lay magistrates and £21 per appearance before stipendiary magistrates. It goes on to say:
"When indirect costs … are brought into the equation, however, the gap between the 2 groups narrows, to £52.10 and £61.78."
A bit of basic arithmetic reveals that that only works if the professional magistrates are paid at the rate of £18,000 per year, which I suspect not to be true. I wonder whether, in that particular instance, the committee is founding some of its arguments on some rather dubious numbers that might have been unwisely selected from a larger report.
Will the member give way?
I wish to develop the point that I am making. I am reading from page 76 of the report, if that is helpful.
The authors of the report go on to include opportunity costs—in other words, the cost to the lay person of giving up the benefit of doing what they might have been doing if they were not in court—and say that, in essence, a lay magistrate costs £9 more per appearance than a stipendiary. Of course, that is not a cost to the criminal justice system. It is a genuine and partial measure of the benefit that the lay magistrate is contributing voluntarily to the system. The committee may have misled itself a little on such issues.
In section 5.20, on page 50, there is a discussion of the management savings that are to be made by centralisation. However, according to standard management theory, increasing centralisation increases management as a proportion of effort. Reasonable criticisms may be made of the savings that might be made there. It is perfectly reasonable to integrate vertically the various parts of the criminal justice system, but to integrate the system across the geography of Scotland and to take away local decision making is not necessarily a good idea.
I say seriously to Colin Fox that he ought to ponder carefully whether when he focuses on a few instances of problems with individuals in the criminal justice system he really represents the views of the people whom I meet on constituency business. Those problems must be set against the considerable need of the victims of crime. In the report there is discussion of diversity among lay magistrates and the system is criticised for not being sufficiently diverse. Magistrates are too old and are not socially mixed. However, lay magistrates are more diverse than sheriffs, which is something.
On the issue of volunteers, I note that Assistant Chief Constable Pat Shearer is trying to have more special constables, who are volunteers, employed across Scotland. That illustrates the fact that there is a place for such people in the legal system.
John McInnes has produced an excellent report, but I hope that it does not make the same contribution to the legal system that a copy of "Huckleberry Finn" from Slade prison library made. Fletcher took it to the prison governor and said, "This is the book you wanted, prison governor." The prison governor asked, "Why?" Fletcher replied, "You wanted a book to prop up your bookcase, and this is the right size." The McInnes report is about the same size as that book—it deserves a better fate than "Huckleberry Finn" in Slade prison.
The review of our justice system is a central plank of the Executive's agenda for this session. My surgeries are regularly visited by people who are affected by crime and antisocial behaviour or who have had a dreadful experience of our justice system. I say to Colin Fox that they will not countenance a system that would rather allow the guilty to walk free than face up to the challenge of reform. That is totally unacceptable to them.
It is incumbent on the Parliament to address those concerns and to make the changes that are needed to create a fairer, more efficient justice system in Scotland. Summary justice may be at the lower end of the system, but it is also the method of dealing with many of the most common problems in our communities. The central theme of the McInnes report is the need to speed up the process of summary justice. In McInnes's words,
"the summary system needs to become more summary".
The committee's report proposes a number of innovative measures for speeding up the summary system—measures that are designed to ensure that cases reach court more quickly and are prepared earlier and that guilty pleas are made at the appropriate time. Any steps to speed up the summary process can only be beneficial in tackling recidivism. Ensuring that there is the shortest possible gap between the offence and the penalty will help to tackle cycles of criminal activity at a very early stage.
One of the most contentious recommendations in the McInnes report is the proposal to create an all-professional judiciary, which would do away with lay justices of the peace. A number of JPs from my constituency have expressed concerns that I share and which have merit. They feel that, because they come from communities that are affected by crime, they are more in touch with the views of local people about the impact of that crime on their communities. They feel that that enables them to use their experiences to ensure that sentencing is more in line with the views of members of the public.
The committee examined the argument that there are concerns in some parts of the country about inconsistency, varying practices and the decline in the number of JPs. However, I highlight the excellent work that is being done by JPs in North Lanarkshire. I assure members that those JPs take their responsibilities seriously. They are required to undertake training regularly so that they can make properly informed decisions about sentencing. I ask the minister to recognise the value of such people and to reflect on the best way to retain their skills and experience.
Although the proposal to create an all-professional judiciary is controversial, there are many positive recommendations in the report. In particular, the measures designed to improve our fines system are to be welcomed. The proposals to streamline the administration of fines by ensuring that they are administered by a single public sector organisation will help to free up valuable police and court time.
I also welcome the proposal to abolish prison as a penalty for fine defaulting. It is important to ensure that that is replaced by further effective sanctions to ensure fine repayment, but I am sure that most people in the chamber agree that prison is no place for someone who has failed to pay their fines and that it is a more appropriate disposal for those people who present a threat to and cause havoc in our communities.
The report proposes the introduction of a new fiscal compensation order, which I welcome. It is essential that the justice system is focused on serving the law-abiding many rather than providing loopholes and delaying mechanisms for the law-breaking few.
I welcome the opportunity to participate in today's debate on the report. Sheriff Principal McInnes is one of the sheriffs who serves at Airdrie sheriff court in my constituency. The report addresses the central issues of summary justice. It provides an excellent tool for further discussion as well as a range of innovative and progressive recommendations.
However, I ask that the minister takes great care in reforming summary justice. We do not want to throw out the baby with the bath water. Many local justices of the peace provide a sterling service to their communities. At a time when the Executive is promoting community participation and empowerment, we should recognise the value of the efforts of JPs on behalf of their communities. We should ensure that, during the consultation period, we listen closely to their views and to all who come into contact with the justice system. I support the motion.
I welcome the publication of the McInnes report and commend members of the review committee for their dedication and hard work in producing it. I agree with the committee and the Executive on the need for a modern justice system that is just and fair as well as efficient and effective.
The report makes a number of plausible recommendations to improve the summary justice system, many of which have been accepted by members from all sides of the chamber. The creation of a single, unified summary court system, managed by the Scottish Court Service, is a welcome step and was agreed to unanimously by the committee because of a belief that it would be conducive to greater consistency, simplicity and long-term efficiency.
I am pleased at the focus on alternatives to prosecution. This is perhaps only a faint hope, but I hope that it will form part of a wholesale move to a system that is less authoritarian, more compassionate to victims and offenders and more focused on restorative objectives. The expansion of mediation services should be a high priority. The greater use of IT in the system, which the Law Society of Scotland has called for, would also be welcome.
As members from all sides of the chamber have acknowledged, the report is not without controversy. I share the concerns about the proposal to abolish the lay justice system. The note of dissent in the report argues that the proposal is not required as part of the unification of the summary court system. It goes further and says:
"Lay justice is a powerful expression of community participation".
It then goes on to say that the
"symbolic effect of lay participation in the criminal justice system … should not be undervalued",
a point that Michael Matheson discussed.
My only personal experience of the system was as a peace protester: I was fined—funnily enough—for breach of the peace. I might have retained a more generous view of the system had I been charged with defending the peace, but I agree with the concerns that have been expressed. I will support Michael Matheson's amendment for the simple reason that it acknowledges the note of dissent.
I will pick up on a couple of the points that Sheriff Lockhart and Mrs Helen Murray JP made. They are not convinced that the abolition of lay justice will contribute to making a more efficient and speedy system. Rather, they argue that lay justice could be drawn upon more effectively, as a resource that is currently underused. It could take on more business and relieve the pressure on the sheriff court system. That is an important concern, given that Lord Bonomy's proposals recommend that case work be moved downward through the system to relieve the increasing pressure of work higher up.
Is lay justice not part of the solution to help efficiency and effectiveness, rather than being a hindrance upon it? I hope that respondents to the consultation will address that question on the basis of the evidence and experiences of all who come into contact with the system, not solely the professionals who earn their livings in court. I ask the Deputy Minister for Justice to address in his closing speech what active steps the Scottish Executive will take to ensure that the McInnes report is consulted upon as widely as possible, especially with JPs, witnesses and offenders.
I begin by declaring my membership of the Law Society of Scotland and my role of consultant with Ross Harper solicitors in Glasgow.
I welcome the McInnes report. It is a very thorough piece of work, which examines and raises many issues. Sheriff McInnes said that some of them would be controversial. Indeed, some of them are. We should concentrate on the objectives of the system. According to Sheriff McInnes, those are to be
"fair to victims and the accused; effective in deterring, punishing and helping to rehabilitate offenders; and efficient in the use of time and resources."
As a number of members have said, we need to keep the balance between those objectives.
I began my legal career as a procurator fiscal depute in Dumbarton. I then moved on to the defence side before going on to more general legal work. Although that goes back to a rather ancient period, if I can put it that way, I have had some experience of the court system, at least as it existed then. There were huge deficiencies in how things operated, particularly in the district court.
When I last appeared in Glasgow district court, which admittedly is some time ago, one appeared to interview the prisoners in a room adjacent to the cells, where three people were being interviewed by solicitors at the same time. There was no privacy and there were usually no summary complaints available so that people could know precisely what the charges were. There were significant deficiencies in how matters were dealt with. That is important in the context of our discussion about a single estate and a single set of arrangements.
Behind that were a number of issues, one of which was the argument about who paid for the arrangements in the district court. That argument led to a lack of investment in the system over a period of time. That might have changed since I appeared in court, and improvements might have been made, but I suspect that they have not been as great as they ought to have been.
The objective is not just the speedy processing of cases from offence to punishment; there is also the middle bit, which relates to the trial and the dispensing of justice. After all, the main objectives of the courts are to decide whether or not an accused has committed an offence and, if they have, what sort of punishment should be imposed. We must remember that underlying our justice system is a presumption of innocence.
Many important issues have been raised to do with the single unified court. Like others, I agree with the arrangements for that court. Like others, too, I am concerned about the abolition of lay justices, especially when we are moving 20 per cent of solemn cases from the High Court down to the sheriff court. It would be a retrograde step if we lost the community feel and input of the 700 lay justices in Scotland. The point that there is a parallel with the children's panels was well made.
The reason for the reduction in the number of people going before the district courts bears close examination. It is partly because of a reduction in the total number of cases and partly because of a number of changes in the way that things are done. It is also partly because of policy decisions by the prosecution about which court certain cases should be heard in. For example, Sheriff Principal McInnes made the point—and it is true—that the use of fixed penalties will reduce the need for court cases in the district court and perhaps the sheriff court. The point that has been made about the 60 per cent use of court buildings is not unimportant. However, if someone lives in Huntly or Inverurie, they are an awful long way from the nearest sheriff court, which would be in Aberdeen or Peterhead. The location of court buildings is important for access to justice. That is as true in rural areas as it is in urban areas such as the one that I represent.
There has been talk of case-hardened sheriffs. I remember a case from some years ago. A rather reactionary JP was advised by the clerk of the court that she had no option but to find a person not guilty because of insufficient evidence. Very reluctantly, she said, "I find you not guilty." Then she added, "But you're admonished." There might be a lesson there. People become case hardened. It is important to have proper training and proper attitudes—whether at the shrieval bench or at district court level.
It is important to be able to follow cases through. The children's panels are important in that regard because of the training that panel members have. It may well be that we could make better use of JPs in the throughput of justice than we have done in the past.
The speed of court cases is an essential part of justice. It is no use if it takes 12 or 18 months for a case to finish, because of repeated adjournments. However, I do not like the concept of trial in absence, which has echoes of some of the rather unpleasant foreign systems that one reads about from time to time. It is important to encourage early pleas in appropriate cases. The key point is not the call over at the trial diet; it is the intermediate diet. The minister will be well aware that many attempts have been made to tackle that problem, almost all of them without long-term success. It is important that the intermediate diet is made effective and that people who are guilty and who are going to plead guilty do so at that diet if they can. We have to get rid of the unnecessary cases that go right through the system—the cases in which people plead guilty for the wrong reasons at the last minute.
All those issues bear careful examination. We will have to await the outcome of the consultation, but let us bear in mind the need for balance. This is all about justice, but a speedy disposal of cases is important. Let us get the technical aspects right and let us take the advice of the public and the practitioners on the details of this very excellent report.
I will support the Executive motion.
Presiding Officer, you will forgive me if I have a certain feeling of déjà vu this afternoon. Here we are discussing fines being deducted from benefits, summary sentencing powers being increased to 12 months and variation in court sitting hours. Under the circumstances, I must surely be forgiven for agreeing with Pauline McNeill that Sheriff Principal McInnes's proposals are a brilliant piece of work, because they simply echo what I was saying in this very chamber less than a year ago.
There have been interesting contributions to the debate and, if I may so, some meritorious ones. A consistent thread has run through all the arguments. There is consensus about speed being of the essence in the summary criminal justice system, providing that fairness safeguards exist.
I want us to go further than is proposed. If there is to be a truly summary justice system, a case should take no longer than four to six months, but that does not happen at present. In stipendiary courts in Glasgow that deal with cases involving the carrying of offensive weapons, such as knives, the trial diet is being set six months ahead of the pleading diet, which is surely unsatisfactory. That being the case, what is likely to come out of the proposals must be welcome.
In her opening remarks, the minister dealt with the question of diversions. She does not want offenders to be criminalised, but she also sensibly said that their conduct must be brought home to them. That is fair enough, but it must also be brought home to them that, when a penalty is imposed, it must be paid. That is not happening, as the minister knows.
Sheriff Principal McInnes sets out in his report exactly the same proposals that I outlined a year ago. I commend the proposals to the minister because they offer a sensible solution that would also allow her to achieve much of what she seeks to achieve. We do not want people to go to prison unnecessarily. At one time, if a court thought that a custodial sentence was appropriate, it would have been imposed. A fine is an alternative to custody in many cases, but sometimes the custody alternative is enacted. We do not want that to happen. Deducting a fine from someone's benefit would prevent them from fine defaulting and going into custody.
I must tell the minister that the supervised attendance orders are simply not a goer—they will not work because the offenders will not turn up. Ultimately, people will just find themselves in much greater difficulty than they are in at present.
It was too much to expect that we would get through the whole debate with the new, consensual Bill Aitken. What evidence does he have for saying that supervised attendance orders will not work, given that we have just introduced pilot schemes in which those orders are a mandatory alternative to the use of prison for fine default?
Many years of dealing with offenders such as the type who will be the subject of the supervised attendance orders have convinced me that they will simply not work. I am more than happy to be proved wrong, but I know that I will not be. That is the essence of my argument.
Annabel Goldie dealt with an important aspect, which is the volume of cases that come to sheriff courts nowadays. Lord Bonomy recommends a 20 per cent transfer of work from the High Court to sheriff courts. In Glasgow at present, there are seven sheriff and jury courts, but that would have to be extended if the work is transferred from the High Court. The existing sheriff court infrastructure could not cope with any extension of work. Something will have to be done to ensure that transferred work can be done. The minister must address that problem and I am confident that she will do so.
Many members raised the question of lay justice. Obviously, I should have declared an interest because I still hold a justice's commission. However, much to the relief of the Glasgow criminal classes, I no longer sit as a justice. Lay justice has a role to play. It has performed admirably for 300 to 400 years. Karen Whitefield was correct when she stated that a lay justice often has a better understanding of what goes on in a community and what disturbs its citizens than a professional judge has. We must reconsider the issue of lay justice, but that does not mean that there must be mutually exclusive systems.
Kenny MacAskill made an interesting point about Glasgow's dual system, which works well. Glasgow district court has eight courts: four stipendiary and four lay ones. Again, perhaps we should consider whether that kind of system can be imported into other areas of Scotland and whether lay justice and professional justice can work in tandem. I leave that as a suggestion.
Surely Glasgow has stipendiary magistrates only because of the volume of work there.
Yes, but a similar argument could apply to other jurisdictions in cities and in country areas. Of course, stipendiary magistrates have greater sentencing powers than do lay magistrates. For example, stipendiary magistrates can disqualify people from driving and impose sentences of up to six months, or nine months in some cases. The use of stipendiary magistrates might take away some of the work from the sheriff courts in other jurisdictions. I commend that to the Executive.
Seeing Mr Pringle reminds me of two points that he made. He said that any proposals that will keep people out of prison will receive his support and that short-term sentences are no good for anyone. Changing his wording slightly, I would support any proposals that will stop people committing crime. Although short-term prison sentences might not do too much good to the accused persons, they do a lot of good to those whose lives they have frequently made a misery.
We have had a useful debate around a number of ideas this afternoon. It has been encouraging to see that the Minister for Justice does not have a closed mind but is willing to consult in a frank and open manner. That is to be commended.
Summary justice is important. Unfortunately, there is a clear career process in criminality, given that those who go through the summary criminal system quite frequently eventually end up in the solemn courts. If the justice system at summary level can be improved by being made short, snappy and effective, we might stop that process of graduation to the greater benefit of society.
We shall support the Executive motion. Although we find nothing particularly objectionable in the SNP amendment, we cannot quite understand why it was lodged, so we will probably not take a view on it.
Like other members before me, I welcome the bulk of the proposals in the McInnes report. I also praise the work of Sheriff McInnes and his team in preparing and producing a thorough piece of work. As has been mentioned, the report is quite large, so although I have taken some time to go through it over the past week, I am sure that I have missed many of the main points.
The main thing to come out of today's debate is the genuine feeling of most members that it is time that we modernised the summary justice system, brought the district courts into the 21st century and moved forward by improving the system so that victims are at the forefront of all that we seek to achieve. Colin Fox obviously felt slightly differently about that. I am sorry that he took that view, because it seems to me that the victims of crime should always be at the front of our minds when we are trying to produce a system of justice for our country. Apart from him, members were generally unified in their approach to making the system work and in accepting that Sheriff McInnes and his team have produced a good report, most of the aspects of which most of us can support.
The report's most contentious proposal is the abolition of lay justices, which was mentioned by many members, including Michael Matheson, Margaret Smith, Margaret Mitchell, Mike Pringle and Bill Butler. It is important that we spend time thinking about the matter. As Bill Aitken and others said, lay justices have been in existence for between 300 and 400 years and they have done a marvellous job. The deep links that lay justices have to their communities are extremely important. That is highlighted in the note of dissent at annex A of the report. We should be very careful about losing people who are rooted in their communities. It is important that people who deal with the summary justice end of the system have that community link. I am certainly concerned about their abolition.
In the note of dissent, Sheriff Brian Lockhart and Mrs Helen Murray state:
"the onus is on those recommending the abolition of lay justice to demonstrate that it is intrinsically undesirable and unworkable".
If there is one criticism of the McInnes report, it is that it has not demonstrated that that is the case. The evidence from the speeches that members from all sides of the chamber have made is that many people feel uneasy about the proposed change.
I have no declaration of interest to make, as I am not a former JP. I have no connection to the Scottish Court Service or the legal profession, but I am also uneasy with the loss of a system that has been in operation for 400 years and which clearly has an intrinsic worth and is rooted in the communities that it serves.
The dissenters pose a number of questions that need to be answered. They ask:
"Is lay involvement in the dispensing of summary justice desirable in principle?"
I think that it is. They also ask:
"Is it possible and cost effective to improve the delivery of lay justice to fit in with a new unified system and to safeguard and enhance its credibility?"
Yes, I think that that is also the case. The dissenters go on to say:
"Only if Ministers conclude that the answer to both these questions is ‘no' … should they decide that the correct way ahead is to move to a fully professional summary justice system."
As I have said, I think that the answer to those questions is yes, not no, so I believe that we must think seriously before we make such a major change to our justice system.
Many members, including Michael Matheson, Annabel Goldie and Mike Pringle, also mentioned the change to remove district courts from local authority control and transfer them to the Scottish Court Service. That is something that we could support. There is good reason for that to happen and it makes sense to unify the courts under a single system, so I certainly do not have any objections in principle to that change. However, as the note of dissent mentions, that change in itself would not lead automatically to the loss of lay justices.
A number of members raised the transfer of business from the High Court to the sheriff court. It is intended that 20 per cent of the business of the High Court will transfer to the sheriff courts. When that happens, the sheriff courts will have a lot to deal with, particularly in Glasgow. I have grave concerns that, if we transfer material up the way at the same time, we will overload the centre. SNP members are concerned that we must be careful not to make a complete mess of the lower end of the justice scale. As many members have said, 96 per cent of cases are summary cases and it is extremely important that we do not cram everything together and end up with a real mess. In trying to solve a problem at the High Court end and at the district court end, we could make a mess of the whole system.
Colin Fox stated that at the front of the sheriff court and the back of the sheriff court are two different classes of people. That may be the case in many instances, but the same cannot necessarily be said of district courts. The distinction that he observes is less marked in district courts, where evidence from 2001-02 shows that, of the 60 justices appointed, 40 per cent were female. That figure is heartening and I hope that it will rise even further. No statistics are available on whether those who sit on the bench are fully representative of the communities in which they serve. That was a criticism of the district court in the McInnes report, but the note of dissent clearly states that there are no statistics for that aspect of the situation. Therefore, it is unreasonable to suggest that, because it might be true in the sheriff courts, it is also true in the district courts.
Members asked a lot of questions about structural change, but they did not give many answers. It is extremely important that all those questions are asked, but it is more important that we have some answers. That is why I am curious why the Executive has taken the line that it has taken by going straight to a consultation on Sheriff McInnes's proposals. The Bonomy report was followed by a white paper giving the Executive's views, which was followed by a consultation and then by a bill. Why, in this case, have we gone straight from the McInnes report to consultation, rather than the Executive giving us its views in a white paper?
Does Stewart Maxwell accept that there is a logical process of consulting, having a debate, producing a white paper and then moving to legislation, as appropriate, but that—as some members on the SNP benches, including Kenny MacAskill, pointed out ably this afternoon—there are also things that we can take forward now, and that it is right and proper that we have a debate in the chamber today and that we consult the people who will be affected by any changes?
I am not objecting to the debate, nor am I objecting to the consultation; I am just curious about why the Executive has done things differently from how it handled the Bonomy proposals.
There are an awful lot of points in the McInnes report on which we can agree and there are many good recommendations that cover a whole list of areas such as the unification of summary courts under the Scottish Court Service, police warnings, alternatives to prosecution and—as Pauline McNeill said—multiple cases against an accused. We can unite behind a lot of what is in the report, but Michael Matheson's amendment is important because it makes the point about the dissent that is registered in annex A. That is extremely important as it is one of the most important parts of the report. Therefore, I support the amendment in Michael Matheson's name.
The debate has been remarkable in a number of respects. It has been remarkable partly because of the consistency of views but also because of the extremely bold attempt by Bill Aitken to rename the McInnes report the "Aitken report"; it is a long time since we have seen such effrontery carried out in such a modest manner, but our Bill is never one to hide his talents.
I will help the members who said that they did not manage to reach the end of report. I will read out the last couple of sentences for their convenience. It states:
"A number of outcomes may result in subsequent prosecutions or referrals to other agencies, for example if a condition such as payment of a fixed penalty is not complied with. For simplicity, these pathways are not shown in the diagram."
There is no need for Mike Pringle to worry himself tonight.
I accept the point that Bill Aitken made about the SNP's amendment. We do not have any great difficulty with what the SNP says in the amendment, although we cannot really understand the point of it. However, we do not understand why in a debate such as this the SNP would want to delete a reference to considering
"the continuing modernisation of the criminal justice system to be an important priority".
If the SNP does not consider modernisation of the criminal justice system to be a priority, I wonder what the rest of its amendment is about. Had it not been for that, we would have been happy to endorse much of what else was said by the SNP.
I will re-emphasise some of the points that have been made by Cathy Jamieson and a number of members during the debate. We recognise that summary justice is a vital component of our justice system. It deals with 96 per cent of all criminal cases that go before the courts, but we also recognise that many of those cases are minor and could be dealt with more effectively. However, it is also right to say—as a number of members, including Kenny MacAskill, mentioned—that although they may be minor cases, they have a real impact on the quality of life of victims and communities. For their sakes, we need to get it right.
We are talking about a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system. McInnes suggested many radical proposals and, deliberately, we have said that we want to listen. As Cathy Jamieson said, McInnes is different from Bonomy because there are aspects that we can move on without necessarily introducing legislation. Therefore, we want to hear people's views; it is right that we listen to what people have to say.
We recognise that there is a minority report on lay justices, which I will come back to. That is another voice that must be listened to on the issue and we will give it due consideration.
However, I wonder about a point that was made by Michael Matheson, and by Stewart Maxwell in his closing speech. We were criticised for not saying ahead of the consultation what we want. However, if we said ahead of the consultation what we intend to do, they would criticise us for that. It appears to me that they would criticise us irrespective of what we said. Theirs was an unfortunate note in the debate.
Most members commented on lay justices. Valid points were made about the sterling contribution —I want to put this on the record—that is made by lay justices throughout the country. They have, over the years, shown remarkable commitment to the justice system and have put in many hours of effort on behalf of their communities. However, we want to reflect on what the McInnes report said about improving the system—we will listen to what has been said.
Patrick Harvie asked whether we will consult lay justices. We will consult and we will consult more than just the lay justices and JPs. We want all those who are involved in the system to express their views. We want local authorities to express their views and—beyond that—we want the people who are directly affected, such as victims and witnesses, to express their views. We will ensure that consultation is wide; copies of the report will be sent to all the district courts. There will be a direct mail shot of the report to all the JPs who made representations throughout the McInnes process. There will be thorough consultation.
There was a remarkable speech this afternoon from the SNP benches. It was an exceptionally constructive and balanced speech and although I could not quite see who made it, it sounded like Kenny MacAskill; however, I am not sure. He made some valid points; we have an open mind on his suggestion that we should consider taking different approaches in different parts of the country. That point was echoed by Bill Aitken, and it is worth considering, although I do not know what the conclusion will be. Kenny MacAskill made a number of constructive suggestions.
Colin Fox complained that resources in the Crown Office are not going to the front line, but that is just not true. Since March 2002, we have recruited more than 60 lawyers, nearly all of them to the front line. We have set up a civil recovery and criminal confiscation unit, which, although it is in the front line, may not be—[Interruption.]
Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the minister, but I have been trying to control the level of conversation by gestures and signals, which are clearly not working. Could we listen to the rest of the speech, please?
I am grateful for your support, Presiding Officer.
Staffing levels in the Crown Office are up 15 per cent and much of that increase will be used to create a more robust structure in local areas, for example by providing better management support for procurators fiscal in the front line. We are moving and we are investing.
Stewart Stevenson raised questions about costs, but some of his points were not directly relevant. The report acknowledges that research that was carried out by Professor Rod Morgan in England and Wales is not directly relevant to Scotland. It illustrates that the salaries of judges are not necessarily the most significant cost elements. Stewart Stevenson suggested that there would still have to be clerks even in the sheriff courts. The difference is that clerks to the sheriffs would not necessarily be legally qualified. Summary sheriffs would also not necessarily require legally qualified clerks, so there are some differences. I acknowledge that that is not the most significant issue, but I want to put the matter in the proper context.
Karen Whitefield made a point about speeding up the system—as did many others—and talked about the contribution made by the lay justices in her area. I echo the view that they make a valuable contribution. Pauline McNeill also referred to them when she talked about speed and Bill Butler talked about their contribution to lay justice. I think it was Pauline McNeill who said that we are right to be cautious and that there would be no guarantee of consistency if we abolished lay justices. However, the debate has enabled us to share across the chamber and across the political parties the view that change is necessary and that McInnes has made a valuable contribution to the debate. If together we can engage in dialogue with people throughout the country, we can come up with a system that is more robust, more effective and more efficient than the one that is currently in place.
All members who spoke acknowledged that the justice system fails people in many cases and for various reasons. The report is part of a bigger package of modernisation on which we have embarked. We are already well advanced with our work on the Bonomy proposals on the reform of the High Court and the report is another vital component in the changes to the system. I hope that today's consensus and enthusiasm will be taken back out into communities so that we have a wide ranging and deep-rooted dialogue that will enable us to make, whether through legislation or—as Kenny MacAskill suggested—through the powers that are currently at our disposal, changes that will be effective, quick and of lasting benefit.